WASHINGTON – President Bush was set tonight to ask the country for more time to let success bloom in Iraq as his administration saluted a Sunni sheik assassinated after challenging al-Qaida’s presence in Anbar province.

The president’s pitch is the latest in a countless series of speeches over the course of the 4 1/2-year war aimed at shoring up public support by signaling new directions and new rationales. His Oval Office talk is scheduled for 9 p.m. EDT, and had Democrats as well as many rank-and-file Republicans aggravated even before it was delivered.

“The American people long ago lost faith in the president’s leadership of the war in Iraq because his rhetoric has never accepted the reality on the ground,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Franciscof.

Senate Democrats discussed plans for legislation to limit the mission of U.S. forces in Iraq. By restricting troops to training Iraq’s military and police, protecting U.S. assets and fighting terrorists – but not setting a deadline to end the war – they they hoped to walk a fine enough line between anti-war stalwarts and moderate Republicans to attract necessary support.

The day after Bush’s televised address – expected to last 18 minutes – he is reinforcing his message from a Marine base in Quantico, Va., just outside Washington, and with the White House’s release of an Iraq status report required by Congress.

Today’s assassination of Sunni sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was a setback, serving notice of the danger facing people who cooperate with coalition forces and the difficulty in fractured, violent Iraq of touting progress.

Abu-Risha headed an alliance of clans allying with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces to take on al-Qaida. He was among a group of tribal leaders who met with Bush last week in Iraq. Part of Bush’s rationale for keeping troop levels high has been centered on recent progress in Anbar Province, and his argument – disputed by many – that it could be replicated elsewhere in Iraq if the effort were given more time.

The White House called Abu Risha’s death an “unfortunate and outrageous act” and said it believed al-Qaida was responsible.

The top U.S. general in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, called it “a tragic loss.”

“It’s a terrible loss for Anbar province and all of Iraq. It shows how significant his importance was and it shows al-Qaida Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy,” Petraeus said in a statement.

As part of the administration’s newest public relations push on Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney planned to travel Friday to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Michigan and MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Iraq also was chosen as the topic for Bush’s weekly Saturday radio address, and administration officials were being offered to television networks for Sunday news show appearances.

The full-throttle effort reflects the high stakes for a president who lost his popularity and his party’s control of Congress in large measure over the war and yet ordered 21,500 additional combat troops there in January to try to bring calm and give his goal of a stable, self-sustaining Iraq a chance. An additional 8,000 support troops soon followed.

A poll released today by The Associated Press and Ipsos showed that only a third of the country approve of Bush’s performance on the war.

Gradually phasing out most if not all of that force escalation by next July – Bush’s plan to be announced tonight – would still leave U.S. troop strength a bit higher than it was before the buildup, which ranged from 130,000 to 135,000.

Democrats against the war were not at all satisfied. They chose Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a former Army Ranger, to deliver their party’s response.

“It creates and provides an illusion of change in an effort to take the wind out of the sails of those of us who want to truly change course in Iraq,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said of the Bush policy.

Bush’s latest approach matches recommendations offered by Petraeus to Bush and in two days of congressional testimony earlier this week. What the president is endorsing, however, represents only a slight hastening of the originally scheduled end of the so-called surge.

Planned troop rotations already call for the first of the additional troops sent this year to come back starting next spring, with all of them home by the end of next summer. That could change only if Bush and his team made unpopular decisions to extend tour lengths or shorten home leave for replacements.

The plan Petraeus announced this week would instead have the first of the additional troops returning home this month, a 2,000-member Marine unit, followed by the mid-December departure of an Army brigade numbering 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers. The other four combat brigades would leave by July 2008 under an unspecified timetable. Petraeus was not precise about whether all of the 8,000 support troops sent with those extra combat forces would be withdrawn by July.

The general cautioned against any talk before March of going below the pre-surge level of 135,000, and Bush is expected to endorse that idea. The president also will say that even ending the surge will depend on continued security gains and no unforeseen events that change the dynamic.

Bush was expected to cite progress but also was ready to talk candidly about the fact that few of the 18 benchmarks that Congress and the White House set to measure progress have been met. The administration has sought to deflate the importance of those benchmarks, which are required to be the focus of the Friday’s report but which the White House now regards as offering an unrealistic or incomplete look at the situation.

While Senate Democrats plotted how to regain momentum in the debate, Bush went over his speech with aides in the Oval Office. He talked by phone Wednesday with Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, thanking them for their service. White House aides also were reaching out to key foreign and domestic leaders to preview the broad outlines of the speech.

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Associated Press writers Anne Flaherty in Washington and Robert H. Reid in Baghdad contributed to this story.

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